Processing facilities are often managed using process control systems. Example processing facilities include chemical, pharmaceutical, paper, and petrochemical production plants. Among other operations, process control systems typically interact with and control industrial equipment in the processing facilities, such as equipment used to produce chemical, pharmaceutical, paper, or petrochemical products. Often times, these or other types of products are manufactured or processed in batches.
Regulated industries often require complete batch records of all aspects related to the manufacture of batch products. In fact, the data records for batch execution are often as important as the products themselves. Non-regulated industries, though not having the same requirements for batch record completeness, also typically use batch records to support functions such as quality assurance analyses. As a result, complete or near-complete batch records are often desirable or required in a process control system.